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I am a historian of early modern South Asia with interest in the social, political, religious, labour, and anti-colonial history of the Indian subcontinent. I use Urdu, Persian, Hindi, and English sources to analyse eighteenth- and nineteenth century South Asia critically. I joined the School of History, Politics and International Relations in 2024 as an Early Career Leverhulme Fellow. Before this, I was a British Academy Newton International Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (2022-2024). I obtained my MPhil degree at the Department of History, University of Delhi in 2015 and PhD degree at the Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi in 2019 in History.  My works explored facets of the Indian revolt of 1857. in 2021, I worked as a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the M.S.Merian - R.Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies 'Metamorphoses of the Political' (ICAS:MP). Between 2021-22, I was a Guest Lecturer at Department of History, University of Delhi. 

My project on Fortune Telling and Astrology in Early Modern South Asia (1700-1900) explores the socio-political history of astrology and fortune-telling and its enduring legitimacy among elites and commoners in eighteenth and nineteenth-century North India. It answers how and why astrology strengthened its hold during India’s transition to British colonial rule despite its emerging split from astronomy, colonial modernity, and Islamic orthodoxy. Using Persian, Urdu, and English language sources, my project challenges early modern narratives of science and politics. By unravelling the early modern knowledge economy and politics of astrology, it makes a fundamental contribution to the field of South Asian social, cultural, and political history.

2025, An Impotent Prince, a Powerful Begum, and a Servant Queen: Lives of Women Servants in the Awadh Court (1814-1837), South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 1-22,

2025, From being attendant to Prime Minister: the case of Agha Mir in early modern North India (1798–1837), South Asian History and Culture, 1–24.

2024, ‘Women’s Learning and Urdu Literary Scene in 19th-century India’, A Most Noble Life: The Biography of Ashrafunnisa Begum (1840–1903) by Muhammadi Begum (1877–1908), translated from the original Urdu, with additional material, by C M Naim, Orient Blackswan, 2022; pp 188, `630, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 59, Issue No. 8, 24 Feb, 2024

 

I have taught courses that range from Islamic empires and Central Asian political formations to regional and national histories of India. These modules emphasised comparative perspectives and the use of primary sources, helping students critically engage with regional and transregional dynamics in the medieval, early modern and colonial periods.

2022, ‘Teachers’ Notes, Indian Independence’, The National Archives (blog), The National Archives, , co-author, Arun Kumar

2017, ‘Domestic Servants: Sources in Urdu and Persian’, blog entry in Servants Pasts: European Research Council Funded Project 2015-18, 13^th October, 

2020, ‘कुठांव: मुस्लिम समाज में जातिवाद को उघाड़ता उपन्यास’ [Kunthav: A Novel unleashing the Caste System among Muslims], The Wire Hindi, 06 September,